Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 22, 2026
Proton Therapy Delivery and Its Clinical Application in Select Solid Tumor Malignancies
Published on: February 6, 2019
Comparative Risk Predictions of Second Cancers After Carbon-Ion Therapy Versus Proton Therapy
John G Eley1, Thomas Friedrich2, Kenneth L Homann3
1Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas; University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas; Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland.
Purpose:
This work proposes a theoretical framework that enables comparative risk predictions for second cancer incidence after particle beam therapy for different ion species for individual patients, accounting for differences in relative biological effectiveness (RBE) for the competing processes of tumor initiation and cell inactivation. Our working hypothesis was that use of carbon-ion therapy instead of proton therapy would show a difference in the predicted risk of second cancer incidence in the breast for a sample of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) patients.
Methods And Materials:
We generated biologic treatment plans and calculated relative predicted risks of second cancer in the breast by using two proposed methods: a full model derived from the linear quadratic model and a simpler linear-no-threshold model.
Results:
For our reference calculation, we found the predicted risk of breast cancer incidence for carbon-ion plans-to-proton plan ratio,
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that second cancer risks are, on average, comparable between proton therapy and carbon-ion therapy.
Related Concept Videos
01:21Cancer Survival Analysis
01:23Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...
02:57Targeted Cancer Therapies
There are several types of targeted therapies against...
01:12Relative Risk
02:59Biological Effects of Radiation
02:49Cancer Therapies
However, cancer treatments can pose several challenges, as therapies used to kill cancer cells are generally also toxic to normal cells. Moreover, cancer cells mutate rapidly and can develop resistance to chemical agents or radiation therapy. Besides, all types of cancer cells may not respond to the same therapy. Some cancer cells respond to one...